he will tear your city down
by gracethescribbler
Summary: Obi-Wan planned to keep a low profile on Tatooine, after Order 66. He was there to protect Luke, and that was all. The only thing was, he kept trying to protect everyone else, too, and that tended to draw people's attention. Usually people whose attention he didn't want, because Obi-Wan's luck was perpetually terrible.
1. Prologue

_"There will come a soldier_  
 _Who carries a mighty sword_  
 _He will tear your city down, o lei o lai o lord_  
 _O lei, o lai, o lei, o lord_  
 _He will tear your city down, o lei o lai o lord_

 _There will come a poet_  
 _Whose weapon is his word_  
 _He will slay you with his tongue, o lei o lai o lord_  
 _O lei, o lai, o lei, o lord_  
 _He will slay you with his tongue, o lei o lai o lord_

 _There will come a ruler_  
 _Whose brow is laid in thorn_  
 _Smeared with oil like David's boy, o lei o lai o lord_  
 _O lei, o lai, o lei, o lord_  
 _Smeared with oil like David's boy, o lei o lai o lord_

 _He will tear your city down..."_  
 _\- "Soldier, Poet, King"_

Prologue

Tatooine wore everything down. Skin, stone, steel, memory, desire, resolve, grief, compassion, until they all began to look like the bare skeletons of krayt dragons and banthas that settled into the sand, worn and smooth and empty. The wind whistled as hollow through Obi-Wan's chest now as it did through those corpses, he often thought, and although later he would say that it was this that had opened him to the Force more than anything else in his life, now he simply felt like the abandoned shell of something, and there was no purpose in it.

Sometimes Obi-Wan thought that he could sit down in his hut and let time pass and never know it, that he could just drift off on the Force and, perhaps, not come back to himself. He did not wish for either of those things, but nonetheless, there seemed to be nothing else for it.

Sometimes, he saw ghosts.

He was never sure if these were visions of the Force or some madness he had succumbed to under the heat of the twin suns. Most often, they were Satine and Qui-Gon. His Duchess and his Master.

He believed Qui-Gon's ghost was real, more often than not. It was usually Qui-Gon who reminded him to get up, when he'd been wandering lost for too long, and to go check on the boy.

Luke.

He was only a baby, still, a year old now. Obi-Wan was not _welcome_ on Owen and Beru's homestead, but he was _permitted,_ so he went once a week, when he remembered, stopped at the farm on his way into town, the sand getting into his boots and scouring his cheeks. They had an agreement that he would help them protect their vaporators and other equipment from the Tusken raiders, in exchange for the water that he needed to survive.

Owen did not like him to hold Luke, but Beru almost always let him. Those were the good times.

Today, Obi-Wan was going into town for supplies, so he would stop and see the baby on the way there. Padme's baby. Luke was beginning to have curly blond hair, to babble (sometimes words) and grab onto things as he was crawling around. He had his father's blue eyes.

Obi-Wan put on his cloak, the same old brown one, to protect him from the sun and the sand and perhaps prying eyes, swept his fingers over the lightsaber hilts set neatly next to each other in his old chest. His saber, and Anakin's. He was saving Anakin's for Luke, really, although as time went on, even this one year, Obi-Wan had begun to realize that Owen and Beru may never let him teach Luke anything.

They didn't trust him. He understood.

When he arrived at their farm, his pack hiked over his shoulder, Owen was not in the farmhouse itself, but Beru answered his knock with Luke in her arms.

"Ben Kenobi," she said, wearily, stepping aside to let him into the house. He inclined his head, politely, easing past her through the low doorway into the cool, pale hall that led to their small kitchen. "Came to see our boy, did you?"

"I had hoped to, yes," Obi-Wan answered, smoothly, sliding a smile onto his face. He did not usually smile, lately, if only because living alone there didn't seem to be a point.

"Well. Here he is." Beru sat down in the kitchen, bouncing Luke a little on her knee. Luke laughed, sticking messy fingers into his mouth, and stared at Obi-Wan with wide eyes. Obi couldn't help a bit more of a grin, at that. He listened to the Force around the child, felt nothing but Light and warmth and a strong, strong presence that said that Luke could feel the Force too. Obi would expect nothing less from Anakin's son. "Are you taking care of yourself, Ben?" Beru asked. She always asked, because although she did not trust Obi, that didn't mean she hated him.

"Always," he said, smooth.

"Of course," she answered, just as smooth, far more sarcastic. "You're not right in your head nowadays, if I don't miss my guess, Kenobi."

"Now, Beru," Obi-Wan chided, "most people who knew me would tell you that was always true."

She shook her head at him and let Luke grab tightly onto her first finger. "I don't know why you come to see him," she told him, and Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow at her. "All you do is sit in the house and look at him and leave. What good does that do either of you?"

Obi-Wan did not answer her question, just set his hand on the table and looked at Luke, watching the baby boy staring at his own little fingers.

"I suppose you want to hold him," she said, almost sharply.

"That would be nice, if you didn't mind," he answered, as politely as he could. He was afraid one day they would feel no more obligation to him, and then they wouldn't let him come see Luke anymore.

But that was not the sort of thing he should dwell on. Such fears were baseless and premature.

So he breathed in, breathed out, and let the Force soothe that away as Beru stood up and came over to pass Luke to him. He rested Luke on his hip, noting that his yellow curls had gotten longer and lighter.

Luke, chattering about something that Obi-Wan was sure had a meaning to his little mind, reached up with a waving hand and grabbed Obi's beard, tugging on it, and it _hurt_ but Obi-Wan smiled, caught Luke's fingers so he didn't pull so hard. "Hello, little one," he said, quietly, chuckling.

Luke said something that sounded like "hi," grinning, and Obi-Wan just breathed, for a little while. There was nothing dark or lost in the Force signature of a child, especially not one this young; and Luke, little blond Luke with his father's blue eyes, was always such a blaze of Light. This was part of why Obi always came to see him, to remind himself what he was doing.

He was protecting this child, keeping him safe. Whether Beru and Owen thought that was what he was doing or not.

"Weren't you going into town?" Beru asked, pointedly, and Obi-Wan untangled Luke's fingers from his beard, only for him to grab onto Obi's hand instead.

"Yes," he said, resting his head on top of Luke's small one for a moment. "Thank you for the reminder, Beru."

She humphed, impatiently, and reached out to lift Luke out of his arms; Luke frowned, said "No!" and curled both hands into fists, repeating "no, no, no" until he was distracted by his own talking and settled into a grumpy argument with himself in Beru's arms.

Obi-Wan smiled, trying not to feel as if he had lost something, and nodded to Beru. "I'll excuse myself, then. Thank you for allowing me to interrupt your day. I will stop by on my way back for the water." She nodded, and he looked at Luke, smiling a bit. "Bye, Luke!" he said.

"Bye-bye!" Luke answered, waving, still a bit grumpy but very enthusiastic.

Obi ducked his head, pulled up the hood of his cloak, and hurried out of the farmhouse before he could regret it.

The town itself, large and dusty and packed with criminals and thugs and bounty hunters (half of whom worked for Jabba or the Hutt clans in some capacity), was a trying place for Obi-Wan. He had told himself, when he first came to Tatooine, that he had to lay low and stay shielded, and that meant not interfering with things, however much it galled his conscience.

The longer the Empire stayed in power, though, the worse things got, and the harder it had become for Obi-Wan to just _not see._ With the fall of the Republic - or perhaps its transformation, Obi-Wan was never sure which he thought it was - its anti-slavery laws became a thing of the past. However poorly enforced those laws had been, they had been _something._

Now there was nothing to keep the slave trade from flourishing - the Hutt clans encouraged it, and there was no Imperial presence here to affect it (whether for better or worse), and Obi-Wan himself…

If he was found, he would endanger Luke, too, so he could not risk drawing attention to himself.

That was why, as he walked into the main market center of Mos Eisley, he pulled up his strongest shields around his mind and sent the whisper into the Force that he was not important, not worth noticing. There could be no blocking out the pain and misery of this town, not entirely, but he could dull it, and so he did that and reminded himself that he held himself aloof like this so he could protect his friends' child.

It was still hard.

Ben Kenobi did not have friends in town, exactly, but the Rodian man that he bought tubers from, Tino, was at least friendly to him and entertained his pleas for news. Today, Tino waved to him as he walked up to his stand in the rowdy marketplace, smiling a little and setting down a knife and a block of wood (Tino liked to carve rough figurines, which he sold alongside his tubers and carrots).

"Hey, Ben," Tino said, leaning forward against the counter of his stand and tapping his fingers restlessly.

"Hello," Obi-Wan answered, amiably, turning over some of the tubers to decide which he wanted to purchase. "Any news?"

Tino snorted. "Same as usual, Ben, not much. The Empire keeps making new laws, and before you ask, _yes,_ they're still staying out of everyone's business here. Nobody's got any use for Tatooine, Ben - of course the Empire isn't setting up shop here."

"Ah, yes, no use indeed," Obi said. There was a memory of Anakin telling him how, when he was a Knight, he would go back to Tatooine and free all the slaves, find his mom and bring her back with him.

Obi-Wan let the memory sift away into the Force and did not dwell on it.

Tino gave him a strange look, one that Obi had become familiar with. No one asked questions, on Tatooine, but Obi always read the questions on people's faces. What was a young man like him, with his Coruscanti accent and polite mannerisms and odd questions, doing on Tatooine, living out in the desert where most didn't risk going?

But questions had a cost, so people left well enough alone. And if anybody here remembered the face of High General Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master, there was little left about Ben Kenobi to call that face to mind. The Force was a precaution, and a powerful one.

"I'll just take a bag of these," Obi said, resignedly. "A little more than last time, Tino."

"Sure thing, Ben." Tino filled a small sack with tubers, weighed it casually, and told him the price; Obi paid it without comment and left.

He went through the rest of his errands more quietly, now dogged by the memory that he should have let go of, Anakin and his bright eyes scrambling through a lightsaber form.

 _"_ _I'm going to be the best Jedi there ever was!" he says, nearly falling over because he puts his foot wrong,_ again, _and Obi-Wan laughs. "Then I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna make Jabba and Watto and all the slavers let everyone go, or_ else!" _Obi tells him he shouldn't say things like that, because revenge is not the Jedi way._

Obi-Wan had always been a hypocrite.

But it did not matter, now (or perhaps it mattered more than it ever had, now that his failings were tearing the galaxy apart), so Obi bought a new blanket at the edge of the marketplace and started the walk back so he could go to Owen and Beru's on his way.

Strictly speaking, there were certain things that were not sold in the main market square. The traders who dealt in sentient flesh still did so behind closed doors, most often, because that was how it had been done in the era of the Republic. Occasionally, that unspoken rule was broken.

Today, it seemed, was to be one of those days. Obi saw them at the edge of the market, three Togruta girls (not women, still young, too young) clinging to each other's hands while a man looked them over, one at a time, and Obi did not mean to stop, but he realized that he had, anyway.

The man grasped a girl's chin, twisted her head, and Obi remembered a clawed hand on his jaw, a growled, _I never forget a Jedi._ They should not have brought Ahsoka on that mission – he had thought so then and he remembered now, how they had dressed Ahsoka up like a slave girl and not one of them had ever forgiven themselves for it.  
Perhaps Obi-Wan was the only one left now who thought of that.

The sand chafed at Obi-Wan's feet in his boots and he thought he saw her, for a moment, with the girls at the edge of the market, and the memory of Anakin's eager face burned. He could smell the sweat and blood and electricity that was Kadavo, and Tatooine's sand on his tongue was the Slave Quarter of Mos Espa and the adrenaline of the podraces.

 _Our duty is compassion,_ Qui-Gon told him, a long time ago. A long time ago when the Jedi were not a relic of the past. Obi-Wan was walking, now, hardly thinking, only knowing that he had once promised himself never to be helpless again, that he had once told himself that he would not let others suffer for him like this again. _Others will try to tell you that there are more important things, but you must not believe them. You will lose sight of what you are, if you let compassion become secondary._

So he had weaved his way between the marketplace stalls, past others who were pretending not to see, before he could tell himself this was a bad idea. He kept the Force as a cloak, a far better one than the one he wore, threaded it around him to say _you do not see,_ and stopped behind the buyer, who had moved on to the next girl and was grabbing her shoulder and turning her around so her hands were wrenched away from her companions.

"Wait your turn," he said, to Obi-Wan, without looking.

Obi reached into the Force, felt the man's Force signature, the pattern of his thoughts, and put silent pressure there. _You forgot something important. You should hurry home._

"Oh, shit," the man said, turned and strode off in a hurry. Obi-Wan stepped forward, wishing for a lightsaber to reach for, for the full power of the Force at his back. Instead, he stood here in front of the three girls and the heavyset Besalisk man who was trying to sell them, and searched for a solution. He could, of course, simply persuade the man to give the girls to him, but that was a short-term solution, and these girls would never get a day's peace again.

Obi had the money to buy them, perhaps, but he had few enough credits now as it was – he had come here with quite a lot of money (the GAR had paid its Jedi Generals well), but he has had no way to make more, so in the year that had passed, his stash of credits had grown smaller and smaller.

But these girls, the three of them, the oldest at _most_ eighteen – Obi-Wan could not leave them here. He could find a way to get more credits, but he could not leave them.

"How much to take all three of them off your hands," Obi asked, coldly. He did not want to give this man money, but better than the alternative.

The Besalisk snorted. "More than you have," he answered, dismissive.

"I said _how much."_

"Alright, so fifty credits apiece. One hundred and fifty credits for 'em." The seller shrugged.

It was not as much as Obi-Wan had expected to have to pay. Still, he frowned and pulled on the Force, said, "One hundred and fifty is too much. Bring it down to ninety and we have a deal."

The Besalisk gave him a suspicious look. "Don't waste my time."

"Ninety credits." Obi-Wan pressed hard in the Force, but so careful – persuasion took subtlety more than brute force. If he could make the man think it was his own idea-

"Fine," the Besalisk growled. "I'll give you a deal. One hundred and ten credits, that's what I'll take for 'em. Scrawny little bitches anyway, not worth the effort." He shoved the girls towards Obi-Wan, who gestured for them to follow him and began cutting around the edge of the market, hands tucked in the sleeves of his cloak.

"I apologize," Obi said, gently, extending the Force to shield them, too. "Let me be clear - I'm not purchasing you to use. I intend to free you. I simply thought perhaps I could also offer you dinner?" He pulled off his cloak as he walked, handing it to the tallest of the girls (the one whose markings were too much like Ahsoka's, neat and white on orange skin), and slung his pack off his shoulders to pull out his new blanket for another of them, the thinnest.

"Why should we?" asked the third girl, blue-skinned and green-eyed and who Obi believed was the oldest.

"Because you look as if you could use the food. Do you have families to return to?"

"Not here on Tatooine," the tallest girl said.

Obi nodded sympathetically. "Well. I can't help much with that. But I can offer you dinner and a place to stay for a while."

He stopped them on the way back so he could buy a cloak to give to the blue-skinned girl, which she didn't seem to want to take from him but did anyway. She tucked it close around her shoulders, and Obi-Wan smiled a bit at her.

"I hope you don't mind a stop along the way," he said, as he resumed walking, adjusting his pack on his shoulders. "I have a few more supplies to pick up, if you want water with your dinner."

They didn't respond, which didn't particularly surprise him. He let it go, grappling again with an old feeling, remembering how the 104th had rescued he and Rex from Kadavo and he had not wanted any of them to touch him, how he had just wanted everything to be quiet.

It occurred to him, also, that this may have been a bad idea - he hardly had the resources to feed four people, but do so he must, or these girls would merely end up begging on the street, worse off than they were before. He could not have left them to whatever buyer came along, so he would find a way to make this work.

Obi-Wan took a long way back to Owen and Beru's homestead, although he regretted making the girls walk through the sand so long in their thin sandals, and, he suspected, without having had a proper meal recently. But he didn't want the questions that would come if people saw him leading three half-naked, bedraggled teenagers through the main thoroughfares.

Beru greeted the four of them at the door with a scowl that would have killed a krayt dragon and a curse that Obi couldn't quite make out. "Here for your supplies," she said, not a question, somehow an accusation.

"Yes," Obi said, smoothly.

"Owen put them where he always does," she told him, then glanced past him at the girls hovering a few meters behind him and added, "If you hired those _children_ out there, Kenobi, you can forget about ever so much as _seeing_ Luke again."

Obi smiled thinly. "Rather the opposite. They seemed in need of a decent meal."

"Then you aren't the one to give it to them," Beru muttered, but she did subside somewhat. "Wait there, Ben." She strode back into the house, and Obi glanced back at the girls, who all looked at a loss about what was happening.

Beru came back shortly with a small bag in her hands, which she shoved at him. "Take that," she snapped. "They need meat on their bones, poor things." Then she waved dismissively at him and shut the door in his face.

"Well," Obi said, tiredly, light. "I suppose that was our cue."

One of the girls giggled, although they were all looking away when he looked back at them. Obi just smiled and started off again for home, and the Force hummed a familiar rhythm of comfort against his skin.

It was not until the girls were safe in his hut, seated at his little tiny table, that Obi-Wan ventured to ask them their names, and then with great care.

Names were powerful.

"I'm Shahani," the tallest girl said, looking very small indeed now that she was sitting down, still wrapped up in Obi's cloak. "These are Asha and Tekli."

Tekli, the girl who clearly trusted him least, scowled and looked at the floor. Asha, the skinniest and smallest of the girls, whose montrals and lekku were still short (like Ahsoka's had been when she was younger), said, "Hi," and promptly coughed, hard.

Obi-Wan set about putting his purchases away, and looked in the bag Beru had given him – it was tubers and some actual bread, a rare enough commodity on Tatooine. Obi smiled to himself. Beru and Owen were generous people, when it came to it. He couldn't fault them for mistrusting him.

Supper was just stew, tubers that he cut up with carrots and cooked with as little water as he could make do with. He stood stirring it all together in the quiet and wished for something better than this to offer the girls. This, then, was what was left of the Jedi's legacy: feeble attempts at kindness, too few and far between. This was what was left of _him._

He kept telling himself he couldn't help, that it was too much of a risk to himself and to Luke to step out and help, but what would he tell Luke, when he got older – that he, the last of the Jedi, had sat in the desert for years on end and let there be all kinds of pain and suffering outside his very door? And what would happen to _him,_ if he stayed here and didn't help, and the desert kept gnawing away at him?

He thought he might wither into nothing, join the ghosts that spoke to him when he had been too long on his own. Like now, when he could almost feel someone standing behind him, someone disappointed at what he had become.

 _I'm doing my best,_ he thought. He knew his old Master wasn't here, but he felt the need to justify himself, somehow. _I have to protect Luke, that's the most important job I have left._

 _You will lose sight of who you are if you let compassion become secondary._

 _I'm doing my best,_ he repeated, impatient, pausing his job to wipe his hands on a cloth. _What else do you want from me?_

He felt something like resignation, a sigh, and he wasn't sure if that was real or in his head. _Your duty is to compassion._

Yes, well, he hardly had anything to offer, now. Jedi principles were hard-pressed without the resources to back them up - what use was all of Obi-Wan's high moral thinking if he could barely manage the credits and food to help three slave girls?

He shook himself and set about ladling cooked tubers and carrots into two bowls and a pair of cups (almost all the dishes he had, here), handed the largest helpings to the girls and leaned against the kitchen wall to eat.

"What was the point of this?" Tekli asked, a bit defiant, clearly still afraid to trust him, and Obi-Wan shrugged.

"I had a friend, a long time ago," he said, "who was a slave." There were too many memories and stories held in that one sentence. "No one deserves that."

"Oh." She looked down and pushed her spoon around in her food.

Obi focused on his own dinner with a quiet sigh. It was getting dark out, slowly, and soon there would hunting calls from the desert creatures, and soon it would be cold, too. "I'm sorry I don't have better to offer you, right now," he said. "I'm afraid I'm not exactly _well off."_

"Nobody around here is," Asha pointed out, timidly, glancing up at him, and Obi smiled at her before she quickly looked away.

"Except the Hutts," he said. "There's something rather ironic about that."

Asha set her bowl down and quickly put her pale ochre hands over her mouth, although it didn't quiet her little burst of laughter very much. Tekli shoved her arm, and Obi-Wan shook his head at the three of them. He wished they didn't remind him so much of Ahsoka.

He was not sure if she had survived the Order and the bloody advent of the Empire - the Empire often bragged about all the Jedi they had killed, but Obi-Wan did not entirely believe them every time they said a Jedi was dead.

After all, he always featured quite prominently on that list.

He knew that Vader and the Emperor knew he was not dead, but they had not found him yet. He could not allow them to.

That night, the three girls crammed awkwardly onto his small bed and he slept on the floor, and over the next few days he worked on finding them proper clothes and jobs. Tino hired Asha to help with his stand and painting his carved figures, seeming charmed by her (he told Obi-Wan, too, that his wife insisted they try to help). Tekli and Shahani found work with an old Lannik woman on the outskirts of Mos Eisley who worked as a seamstress and an herbalist.

And Obi, entirely by accident, found himself consistently trying to help people where he had told himself before he would not. After the girls, it was a mistreated herd of banthas; after that it was a little family that hadn't been able to eat for weeks; after that it was a woman being assaulted in a back alley of Mos Eisley. None of it was entirely planned, but Obi-Wan had lost the ability to _not see,_ and he had never been much good at not interfering. That was how it began.

* * *

 **A/N: Welcome to the fic! :)**


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Obi-Wan sat on the floor of his hut, hands folded neatly in his lap, the sunlight creeping through his one window to warm his shoulders. The Force, too, was close, flowing in its never-ceasing currents through his mind, over his skin.

The Force was _Dark_ now.

Even in meditation, Obi-Wan could no longer find balance – there _was_ no balance anymore. There was simply the Dark, growing more and more pervasive, bleeding into his thoughts, making it harder and harder to reach for the Force without using his anger, his grief, his exhaustion. Meditation was better, but today- Today, in the sun, wrapped in Qui-Gon's old robe, Obi-Wan could feel nothing but chaos.

There was a message, waiting for him, whenever he finished his meditation. He had one link to the world outside of Tatooine, only one besides the unreliable news from the locals.

It was a holocomm, one that only Bail Organa had the frequency for, and him only because Obi-Wan had left Leia with his family. Sometimes, Bail sent Obi-Wan messages – he had begun a resistance cell, and he was convinced that Obi could be of help to this resistance.

Obi-Wan could not risk such a thing.

There was a new message waiting for him and he knew it would be another plea from Bail. _"Please, old friend,"_ he would say. _"Come stand with us like you used to. The people need you."_ That was what he always said, one way or another.

Obi-Wan always listened to the messages, so that he could send the same answer. No. No, he would not leave Tatooine to join this resistance against the Empire, because however well-organized it was beginning to sound, however he sometimes felt threads of light, of defiance, in the tapestry of the Force, he could not come out of hiding. There was too much at stake, and far too much to risk, for him to throw himself back into the conflict in the galaxy. He knew that there was nothing the Empire would like so much as to see him dead.

He was not sure what Vader thought. Sometimes Obi could _feel_ him, the Emperor's prize enforcer and apprentice, and at those times he knew that Vader was searching for him. Then he would stay in his hut and cloak himself in the Force, in the balance and the nothingness that came in the desert, and in those times he would not allow himself to think of the people he had lost, for fear of seeming too much like himself.

He didn't know if the Emperor or Vader could find him, in the Force, but he knew that there was a sense of awareness between himself and Vader, a slight pull like a faulty compass needle.

Today, however, was not one of those days, so Obi-Wan let the Force pull him under, until he was only aware of his hut and the surrounding country through its pattern in the Force. He could feel little sand mites outside the door of his hut, a womp rat sniffing around the vaporator that he had scrounged up the credits to purchase a year ago, and off in the distance some Jawas hiding from a prowling krayt dragon that felt like a beacon of fire.

He also felt Luke, four-year-old Luke, playing and running around in the sand, and for a moment he sensed no irregularity in that – Luke was an active child, a little spark of imagination and excitement that he could almost always feel when he listened to the Force.

He quickly realized, however, that Luke was not where he ought to be, that the little boy was not at home with the steady, warm flames that were Owen and Beru, but was scrambling about in the sand dunes, thrilled with his adventure and entirely too far from the safety of his aunt and uncle. Obi-Wan opened his eyes, keeping part of his focus on Luke, and pushed himself to his feet. He knew that Owen and Beru would not allow Luke out so far alone, and he also felt that the burning point of hunger and ferocity that was a hunting krayt dragon was entirely too close to Luke's location.

Obi grabbed his staff, a sturdy wooden stave that he carried in place of his saber, now, and hung his canteen on his belt – only fools risked going out into the desert without a source of water. Even if he knew where he was going, he no longer left his hut without the canteen. Not after he had once become lost on his way to Mos Eisley, in a sandstorm, and had barely made it home.

With these two vital items on his person, Obi-Wan stepped out his door, the heat of the twin suns hitting him like a wave of blaster bolts, the wind blustering and carrying stinging grains of hot sand to scour his cheeks, his hands, his eyes. Obi pulled up his hood, accustomed to the punishment of the desert, and stepped forward in a brisk walk toward the pull of Luke's Force signature.

Other people, people unused to the desert, would have struggled to move as quickly over the sand dunes as Obi did, but he had been here for four years, trekking regularly back and forth in the sands between his hut and the Lars's home and Mos Eisley. Tatooine made its people tough, by necessity, and Obi-Wan had only to reach for the Force to strengthen his legs and help himself walk faster and with better balance. He followed Luke's signature to the dunes that swelled along the edges of one of Tatooine's canyons, and as he drew closer, he could almost feel the ground shake from the steps of the hunting dragon, although he could not see it. He could _hear_ it, however, by means of its heavy, grinding footsteps.

Not its hunting call now, though - most likely, the creature was very close to a kill.

Obi-Wan thought it was still focused on the Jawas, and not Luke.

He found the little boy sitting cross-legged in the sand, in a bit of a hollow that he'd dug for himself near the edge of the canyon. Luke was scooping another hole in the sand, pulling out smooth stones and things to pile in his lap, and Obi smiled and pushed his hood back as he walked around to where Luke could see him.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, softly, crouching down by the busy boy and raising an eyebrow.

Luke startled, a little, and stared at him, then shrugged sheepishly and shook his head. "Nothing. Aunt Beru _said_ I could be outside."

"I'm sure she did," Obi-Wan sighed, and sat back on his heels, smiling. "I don't think she meant you could be out _here,_ Luke."

"But it's so _cool,"_ he pointed out, which was indeed a fair point.

"Yes," Obi-Wan agreed. "But you'll get thirsty."

"I'm not thirsty!"

Obi suspected that was not the case, especially since Luke was half-buried in sand and there was sand in his blond hair and in the folds of his light brown shirt. He chuckled and reached over, tousling Luke's hair. "Now, Luke, you and are going to have to go home."

"Aww, _Uncle Ben,"_ Luke complained.

Obi chuckled again, although for just a moment it stuck in his throat. "I know it's disappointing, but do you see the canyon?"

"Yeah."

"There is a krayt dragon in the canyon," Obi said, very gently, although to his surprise Luke only stiffened a little, and his eyes lit up with a sharply familiar and unfortunate look of interest.

"Woah," he breathed. "Really? I've never seen a krayt dragon."

"That is because they are very dangerous, Luke," Obi said, calmly. "You wouldn't like to see one. It's time to go."

Obligingly, Luke scrambled out of his hollow, sandy seat, dropping all his collected rocks and bits of scrap into his pocket. Unfortunately, once he latched onto Obi-Wan's hand, he stayed put, stubbornly, eyes fixed on the canyon.

"I wanna see it," he said, very quietly, but Obi-Wan could feel the dragon was very close to them, and even if it was intent on its hunt, Obi was not anxious to give it any reason to come after them. He suspected the dragon would think them easier prey than a band of Jawas (although that wasn't really saying much).

"Let's go," he said, cheerfully. "I can draw you a picture of a krayt dragon when we get you home."

Luke grumbled, leaning forward so much Obi-Wan thought he was going to fall flat on his face. "But a real dragon," he pleaded.

Obi smiled. "I hope you're never unlucky enough to see one this close." Luke grumbled, and Obi chuckled and started back toward the Lars homestead, with Luke reluctantly trudging after him and hanging onto his hand.

It was very quiet.

And Luke stopped walking.

"Hey Uncle Ben," he whispered, "I think it's coming."

Obi-Wan stopped too, automatically spinning the Force around them into a shield and disguise all at once, and reached out for the feeling of the krayt dragon's mind.

"Ah," he said. "So it is."

No wonder it had gotten quiet.

Then the edge of the canyon shook, and there was an echoing crack of stone, the sound of heavy claws gouging into rock, and Obi-Wan bent down and scooped Luke up into his arms, pressing into the Force and trying to convince the dragon's heavy, intelligent mind that it should turn around and stop climbing the canyon wall.

But it was a futile effort; the dragon's claws hooked over the edge of the canyon, grey-brown and wickedly curved, and then its wide, craggy head, the size of a sandspeeder, reared up past the lip of rock, and Obi-Wan retreated as far back as he could get, tightening his arms around Luke, whose Force signature hummed with an electric mix of excitement and terror.

The dragon was the color of the sand, dull brown and gold, with eyes lit fiery orange and yellow, slit pupils narrowing in the sunlight that glinted off the dunes. Muscles bunched and strained in its massive shoulders as it crested the top of the canyon, and Obi-Wan retreated still further back, cutting around behind a sand dune so that they had some slight shelter, because when the dragon settled and sniffed the air, all forty meters of it stood long and low and powerful at the edge of the canyon, tail lashing back and forth and spraying sand and pebbles into the air, and it would only have had to make a small leap forward to crush them both.

Obi-Wan thought that it would be incredibly ironic to die like this. To escape all the forces that were trying to find him, only to be eaten by a canyon krayt dragon because his padawan's son was every bit as rebellious as his father had been.

Actually, that might be fitting.

Then, for a long moment, everything was very still. Obi-Wan could have counted all the scales along the dragon's snout, could also have counted the teeth in its half-open mouth. He could smell its breath and see its claws digging deeper and deeper into the sand, and the dragon looked back at him, head tilted, the way all predators look at unfamiliar prey. Taking his measure.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes.

Everything in the Force was hot and bright, fire and energy, and as he had long ago learned to do, he reached out again toward the dragon's mind with his own, open to the Force and to the hunger and power that the dragon was.

Asking the dragon to change was like asking a mountain to change, like asking the canyon below them to turn its course, but stone was always shaped by wind, by water, by the shifting sands, and Obi-Wan had long ago learned to let the Force's currents do the work for him. He felt the raw hunger and ferocity of the dragon, felt it wanted to leap forward and claim an easy meal, and Obi-Wan smoothed over this desire with his will and the Force's power, dared to redirect the creature back to its original hunting grounds. _I am a friend,_ he said, to the mountain, to over forty meters of claws and ridged scales and curled horns. _We are not worth your time._

The ground shook and Obi-Wan opened his eyes to see the krayt dragon take two steps towards them, raising its head to look down, waiting, nostrils flaring as it scented the air. There was a rumbling growl hanging between them. Obi-Wan did not move. He stood in the sand, immobile, practically between the dragon's arching claws, one hand carefully outstretched, and the Force flowed between them.

Obi-Wan did not try to control. He understood the dragon's hunger and drive to kill. And now the dragon could understand Obi-Wan's need to protect, could understand that he was not, after all, easy prey.

The krayt dragon blew out a sharp breath, shook its heavy head, and dropped low to the ground again, turning to climb back into the canyon, a careless swipe of its tail nearly clipping Obi's head. And Obi-Wan hugged Luke closer to him, turned around, and started the trudge back to Owen and Beru's homestead.

They did not thank him.

That was not, perhaps, a conscious choice: when he came to their door, Beru practically lunged at him, grabbed Luke out of his arms and hugged the four-year-old tight to her, pressing her cheek against his small one. "Where _was he?"_ she said, and Obi-Wan told her, trying not to make it sound as if he'd been in any real danger.

Luke damned his case, somewhat, with loud and cheerful explanations of just how _huge_ the dragon had been, how Uncle Ben had made the dragon run away _by himself,_ how Luke _helped_ and wanted to learn how to do that, too. His story-telling made Beru frown at Obi-Wan, who simply pointed out again that he had only gone to find Luke because he sensed he was far from home and close to danger.

"Well," Beru said, brusquely. "Come eat something before you go home, Ben."

Obi-Wan nodded and followed her back into the kitchen, where she sat Luke in a chair and informed him that he was not allowed to play outside for the rest of the week.

"Owen is looking for him," Beru said. "I hope he doesn't stay out long." With no way to contact him and tell him Luke had been found, he might end up wandering fruitlessly through the dunes for some time. There wasn't much way to help that, though – no one around here had the money to waste on frivolities like commlinks.

"I collected some stuff!" Luke said, digging into his pocket and dumping the sandy rocks and bits of scrap metal onto the table. "Look, Aunt Beru!"

She tutted, disapprovingly, shaking her head. "Luke, put that mess away. You've gotten sand all over the table."

Luke looked disappointed, but he did as he was told, settling his forearms on the table and propping his chin on them. Obi-Wan sat down next to him and tousled his blond hair.

 _"_ _Master, can I- show you something?" Anakin stands with his arms crossed, trying to look as if he doesn't care what Obi-Wan says. He's thirteen, so of course he's much too old to ask for his Master's approval about_ anything.

 _Obi smiles, though, and nods, so Anakin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little disk that he sets on the floor. He presses a button, and the disk turns out to be a little crab-like droid, which scuttles around in circles for a moment before darting off under the couch in their quarters. "It's for finding stuff you lose," Anakin explains._

 _"_ _Like your lightsaber?" Obi-Wan suggests, raising an eyebrow._

"No." _Anakin shrugs defensively. "I mean, maybe."_

Owen came back just after Beru had given Obi a bit of coarse flatbread and some milk, and the look of relief on his rough face was immediate and completely sincere, although all he said was a gruff, "There you are, Luke. Where were you, then?"

Luke huffed. "Playing."

Owen was not one for scolding, like Beru was; he just leveled Luke with a disapproving glare and strode over to the counter to get himself a cup of milk.

Luke peeked over at Obi, and half-whispered, "That was so cool, Uncle Ben."

Obi saw Beru looking at them, _felt_ her frustration in the Force, but focused on Luke, who looked curious and eager and as if he wanted Obi to tell him he was right, that what happened was exciting, instead of scolding him.

Perhaps Obi should have told him that he oughtn't to have gone out by himself, perhaps he should have said that krayt dragons _weren't_ cool, perhaps he should have told Luke not ever to try what he'd just done. Instead, he met Luke's bright, questioning blue eyes, and said, "It was, wasn't it?"

Luke nodded, happily, and spread his hands in front of him. "It was so huge, and then it just-" He stopped, thinking for a moment. "How did that happen, Uncle Ben? Did you make it do that?"

Obi smiled. "Yes."

"Enough chatting," Beru said, suddenly, very sharp, and Obi leaned back, realizing both Owen and Beru were looking at him reprovingly. "Luke, I want you to go to your room until you can tell me why you aren't allowed to go wandering in the desert by yourself. Ben, unless you plan to stay and help with the chores, I really think you'd better go. I have things to get done."

Obi-Wan stood, suddenly feeling a bit cold, and nodded. "Of course. I'm sorry for intruding."

"You weren't," Owen said, gruffly. "You brought our boy back. I'm sure Beru is just tired."

Beru scowled, at that.

Obi nodded. "All the same. Excuse me." He tucked his hands in the sleeves of his robe and left.

It was not until he got home and closed his door and set his things down that he recognized the galling burn in his throat and the tightness in his chest for bitterness.

Owen and Beru didn't seem to want him near Luke, not really, and Obi no longer believed they'd let him train Luke. They barely wanted him to see them anymore, he thought, and it ached a little. He knew they owed him nothing, he knew that they felt he would only endanger Luke if he tried to raise a new Jedi, but at least for a time they had let him play with Luke, although he knew they didn't know what to make of him. Now he thought they had decided he was dangerous, a cancer, almost. He did not blame them for that. Sometimes he agreed with them (only sometimes, only when he was very tired and the Force was too heavy).

Obi-Wan used to comfort himself with the idea of someday getting to train Luke, but he should be teaching him soon, and Owen and Beru had shut down the conversation every time Obi had tried to bring it up. It seemed an impossible idea, now.

He should not be bitter about it. He should release it to the Force; for after all, this must be the will of the Force, and he could hardly question _that._ But still, he sat down on the edge of his bed and for a moment, he felt the full empty weight of the desert sweeping through his veins again, all the loneliness of it, and he almost didn't want to reach into the Force to let it go.

But he did. He closed his eyes and forced his breath to slow and held tight to the currents of the Force until he just felt hollowed out and smooth, like a shell.

He decided to busy himself with his latest project - rather an ambitious project, he thought, but one he had come to believe was necessary. He pulled out one of his many journals and opened it to the notes he had been making about criminal activity here on Tatooine – especially on the connections he had found, in the course of his daily activities, to Jabba and his palace. He had come to the conclusion that Jabba ran just about everything of importance in every back alley of Mos Eisley, all the brothels and drug dens and bars and the slavers who had only become more prevalent since Obi-Wan started living here.

And perhaps it was a bit unwise, but Obi-Wan had decided he needed to do something about it. Maybe it was the best penance he could think of, an apology to his lost padawan, the boy who'd wanted to save all the slaves in Mos Espa someday. Or perhaps it was just because it was hard to be content with small things when he was really only putting bacta patches on gaping wounds.

Whatever the reason, he had set himself the task of dismantling Jabba's criminal empire entirely on his own. So far, he wasn't quite sure how – he'd managed to shut down quite a few of the smaller bosses and slavers (they were all afraid of him; he didn't need a lightsaber to make an impression), but as for the problem of Jabba himself, with all his formidable allies and his extensive resources – Obi-Wan was not yet sure how to tackle that.

So he went over his notes again, pages and pages of them, and made new ones. Mostly questions, neat and organized, about Jabba's suppliers, about whether he had Imperial support (Obi-Wan was fairly sure that the Empire spared no interest or effort for Jabba's affairs), about connections and weak points and whether this were even _possible_ until his eyes burned and a headache beat a rhythm in the middle of his forehead. Then he finally sighed and closed his journal and set it back away in his chest.

Next to his other things, few as they were.

He skimmed his fingers over his saber, the one he'd built at the beginning of the Clone Wars (a long time ago, now, it seemed to him – some ten years or so, it was hard to remember exactly), and without really meaning to he curled his fingers around the hilt and picked it up, automatically shifting the weapon into the old familiar grip in his hand.

It was not right of him, but sometimes he missed the war. Sometimes he missed the motion and the rush of fighting, missed being _High General Obi-Wan Kenobi,_ missed not having to fear the hum of a saber in his grip or the flow of the Force in his veins. And, always, he missed his men.

He thought he understood what had happened to them. He'd worked it out, after, when he remembered how to think and had found himself here, alone. Then he'd remembered about the 501st ARC trooper, Fives, and about what Anakin had explained about Fives' death, and about the inhibitor chips in the clone army's brains that Obi-Wan, like everyone else, had forgotten.

Obi didn't know _exactly_ what had happened on the day the Republic fell, but he comforted himself (it was a thin, bitter kind of comfort) with the knowledge that his men didn't turn on him out of their own free will. He didn't know where any of them were now. He wasn't even sure if the armies that razed the galaxy now were still the _vode,_ committing atrocities they never would have before. Sometimes he thought it was better if he didn't know.

He sighed, turned the saber hilt in his fingers, and set it back in the chest. He couldn't think about those things, not anymore – attachment to memories was attachment all the same.

(His hand still hovered over the hilt of Anakin's saber, the one he wanted to give to Luke, and Obi was still not strong enough to silence the dry pang of regret. For a moment, and a moment only, he could feel Vader's attention turn towards him in some far-distant galaxy.)

Obi-Wan clenched his hand into a fist and closed the chest on his journals and the pair of lightsabers.

He left the message from Bail Organa alone.

* * *

 **A/N: This was your first real chapter, with angsty/badass Obi-Wan because what else do we all want, really.**

 **Tbh I have no idea at all where this fic is going.**


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Obi-Wan sat in his booth in the bar, hands folded neatly around a glass of whiskey, condensation gathering along the tops of his fingers and making a ring on the scratched table. The bar was one of the… more unpleasant ones on Tatooine, which Obi-Wan was beginning to be quite well-acquainted with – this particular establishment was a low, squat wood building with no windows and a narrow door, merely a common room arranged around the bar counter and a 'fresher that Obi-Wan had made a mental note never to see the inside of. The floor was rotting wood thick with grime and sand, and the Rodian working the sticky, fly-ridden bar looked as if he hadn't slept in a week (Obi wouldn't be surprised, really).

The whiskey was not good, but at least the glass was mostly clean. Obi had made sure of that.

He'd been waiting here for an hour – there was due to be a meeting here between a bounty hunter and one of Jabba's people, if Obi-Wan had gotten his facts right. Jabba didn't do anything himself – his power was through influence, which to a certain extent made him easier to keep track of, once you knew who he was connected to.

As far as Obi-Wan understood it, Jabba had recently been having some difficulty with his suppliers – between Imperial pressure on trade and the natural obstacles that Tatooine's climate presented, Jabba wasn't living in the wealth that he was once so accustomed to, and he was getting a bit touchy about it. Obi-Wan thinks if he could, perhaps, accelerate this situation, it would be easier to isolate Jabba. If Jabba had fewer resources to offer to his followers, surely he would slowly lose his allies over time.

He's here, in fact, because Jabba commissioned a bounty hunter to get rid of a local merchant who'd refused to take on the risk of working with him; unfortunately, Obi-Wan had only learned this after he found the merchant dead.

At least the incident had left him with this opportunity to get more information, and it was with that in mind that he pulled his hood further over his face and glanced toward the door again, hearing it scrape open.

The man who walked in was one of Jabba's clerks, Obi-Wan believed; he was a Rodian man, skin a light turquoise, with a nervous kind of gait and a trembling bottom lip. He blinked fast and nervous, his wide, round eyes darting distastefully around the bar. He waffled his way over to a booth where a Quarren man sat cleaning his blaster, an irritated scowl on his tentacled face.

Without looking up, the apparent bounty hunter sighed and said, "You are late again, Anno. I was beginning to think you were going to back out on paying me." He lifted his blaster, eyeing it appraisingly, and then set it down in front of him in clear warning.

"Don't get huffy with me," Anno said, sitting down at the booth with a scowl, tucking his arms across his chest. "I had personal business with Jabba and it ran late, I have your money."

The bounty hunter snorted and tapped the table with one hand. "Just give it here, scrawny."

"Fine." Anno scowled, but he pulled out a small pile of credit sticks and dropped them on the table. "We have another job for you, though, if you want it."

"What are we talking about?"

Obi-Wan looked down at his drink as Anno glanced furtively around the bar. "There's a supply caravan coming from Mos Espa in two days. You are to make sure it gets to Jabba's palace. You will need to kill the man in charge of the caravan, but his second has agreed to work with Jabba. They have shipments for us that were planning on selling in Mos Eisley, rather than honoring our agreement. Jabba simply wants to ensure that the deal is kept."

"Interesting." The bounty hunter smiled a little. "You all aren't having the easiest time out there, are you?"

"Keep your voice down, Tiskath!" Anno hissed, and Obi-Wan smiled slightly. "Watch how you talk. Jabba's business is not yours."

"Okay, Anno, I know." Tiskath stood up, holstering his blaster, and Obi-Wan sipped his whiskey. "I'll take that job. My usual rate."

"Good, good. Jabba will be pleased."

The Quarren muttered something in his own language that roughly amounted to, "Who cares," and went to buy himself a drink. Anno left the bar, and Obi followed suit a moment later, considering.

This caravan would, perhaps, make only a small difference in Jabba's supplies or lack thereof, but it would be a start, at least. Obi was sure that he could protect a caravan from a bounty hunter, saber or no saber, so that was not so much a concern.

But he hesitated at the idea of this, of moving in direct opposition to Jabba and beginning a small war against the Hutt. He was fairly confident he could remain anonymous, but suppose he could not? He couldn't risk anything happening to Luke, and drawing attention to himself would, by extension, draw attention to the Lars family. No matter what else happened, he was here to protect Luke, first and foremost. Everything had to be secondary to that.

But Luke was also going to have to grow up here, on Tatooine, and if it was ruled by Jabba and the criminal classes, how safe could Luke really be? And still Obi-Wan felt that he could not justify trying to teach Luke about the Jedi if he did nothing but fend for himself for the rest of his days here.

Obi-Wan had his code, still, however distorted everything had become. There were tenants he lived by, teachings he had taken to heart as a padawan that he could not abandon now.

(And it was still true that some part of him craved a fight, that he wanted to be active again, that perhaps war was in his blood, now.)

He went to a holobooth at the edge of town, one where anyone could access records or the Imperial HoloNews or, in his case, local supply shipments that were due when and from where. There was only one shipment for two days from now, carrying a large quantity of food and tools and other very basic necessities. If Obi had to guess, which he did, he would say it was one of Mos Eisley's more regular and vital caravans. If these supplies went to Jabba instead of to Mos Eisley, the people would never see most of them. A caravan this large would make a significant difference for the people here.

Obi certainly couldn't let Jabba have it.

The route the caravan was taking steered clear of most of the raider settlements, but there were still trackless stretches of dunes between them and Mos Eisley. Plenty of time for a bounty hunter to find them and kill the merchant in charge for a simple change in route.

Obi-Wan reviewed the terrain again, the projected arrival time for the shipment, then smiled and nodded to himself, because as missions went, this would be fairly simple. All he had to do was defend the shipment from one bounty hunter long enough for it to get to Mos Eisley. The part that was posing a problem was the fact that he couldn't overtly use the Force, or his saber. In fact, letting his face be seen would, in all likelihood, also be a mistake.

It was with this in mind that Obi left the back alley pubs of Mos Eisley's red light district and took the barely-more-respectable main thoroughfares until he came to a small pawn shop. It was operated by a very, very old Geonosian trader with only one properly working eye and a nose for trouble. The building itself bowed in the middle like a smile, the upper floors cheap apartments, the bottom floor the actual shop. With a concerned glance at the bent beams above the door, Obi-Wan pushed his way into the pawn shop and tucked his robe around him, looking around.

He needed a mask, and some other sorts of clothes.

Realistically, perhaps he should have gotten a blaster – but really, he _hated_ blasters. He was good with them, so he might not have had space to be picky, but he didn't particularly want one anyway. He decided to consider that later, and instead walked over to look at a disorganized rack of coats and cloaks and other, more suspicious-looking clothing options (both practical and otherwise), and thought wryly to himself that pretending to be dead certainly brought variety into his wardrobe choices.

Most of the clothes looked secondhand, so Obi-Wan was a bit careful looking through them, discounting items that appeared particularly stained. In the middle of the rack, between a lacy purple shirt and a pair of black leather pants, he found an ivory-colored coat, long enough to go down to his knees, stiff, with a high collar. When he took it off the rack, he didn't find it heavy enough that it would be uncomfortable in the desert, nor did he think it would it get in his way. There were some buttons on it, tarnished gold, and threadbare detailing on the collar and cuffs. Obi didn't much care, of course – so long as he didn't look like a Jedi, anything would do.

But this _was_ rather nice.

He bought a long linen scarf, a precaution against the sun, and a pair of fingerless gloves (having to rely on physical force more than the _Force_ was a bit harder on your hands), too. He and the shop owner did not discuss his purchases, and Obi put them in his pack and left without comment or ceremony. So many businesses were quite good about not asking questions and not naming names. This shop was, of course, one of those.

He thought he would just use his staff for now. If it didn't serve, he would find something else, but until then it would be easiest to adapt his old saber forms and fight much as he always had.

He had, of course, kept in practice with his forms – he had merely become accustomed to doing them without saber in hand. Most mornings, at sunrise, he stood in the early morning chill as the first rays of the twin suns turned the dunes golden, and ran through his forms, barefoot on the sand. It was meditation, in part, like he had long ago taught Anakin.

Anakin was never good at traditional meditation. However, Obi had found that active, working meditation was good for him. Perhaps one of the few things he had gotten right.

Not that it mattered now. If he hadn't focused so much on meditation and the Code and things that Anakin had never seen any value in anyway-

Never mind that.

Regret was not the Jedi way.

He went home. He was tired and sore – yesterday he had helped some people in town repair their roof so he could earn a few credits, and that had left his shoulders and hands burning a bit today. It was a good way to support himself (and a little less risky than the games he played in bars at times), but a tiring one.

Sometimes he wondered what the people he used to know would think of him, if they saw him now. That was, he thought, part of why he didn't like to answer Bail's messages. He was almost afraid that Bail would somehow realize what had become of him, in the desert. How he was different now, how he was not the General that Bail wanted.

Perhaps it was pride, too – he thought that if Mace or Master Yoda or Plo would have seen him like this, he would be ashamed.

Even though that didn't matter, now, because they were all dead. Obi-Wan didn't like to check the HoloNews anymore, because whenever he did, he saw the public list of Jedi that the Empire had killed, a constant reminder of those he knew he'd lost.

Kit was dead, and Aayla, and Luminara, and Quinlan.

And Ahsoka. She was as much his padawan, in some ways, as Anakin's, and he had been so proud of her, as she grew up. Then he had failed her, and she'd left the Order, and now she was dead.

Obi-Wan passed over some of his own tracks in the sand again, which had been softened by the winds, and as he came in sight of his small house and the vaporator, he felt, as he often did, the vast and painful gap between where he was now and where he had once been.

Perhaps he only missed the war because he had, more often than not, known what was _right._ Perhaps he missed being a General because when he had been one, he had been more able to protect people. Now he was not entirely sure what he was. The most accurate term now, perhaps, would be a relic. Something left over that shouldn't be alive.

Quite suddenly, he knew that _she_ was here. One of his ghosts, the least frequent and most dreaded (most longed for), she was walking just behind him in the sand, and he saw the edge of her midnight-blue dress out of the corner of his eye. He did not look at her, because of course she was not real, and could not be.

And yet.

"My dear Obi-Wan," she said, so gently, sighing (it was only the sigh of the wind over the sand, and not her, he knew this). "You worry me, sometimes. When are you just going to let yourself rest?"

He did not answer. (Not yet.) He checked to make sure his vaporator was in proper condition and working, then walking inside and sat down in a kitchen chair, tugging his boots off and shedding his cloak carelessly over the back of the chair. Reaching into his pack, he pulled out his new clothes, tossing the scarf and gloves onto his table and standing up to tug the coat on, shrugging his shoulders so it fit right.

"Look at you," Satine said, fondly, and then there she was, walking around to stand in front of him, stepping forward to straighten the lapels of the coat. Obi couldn't avoid looking at her – she was right there, her straight, regal features bent in concern and gentle amusement, and she glanced up at him with her sharp blue eyes gone very soft and he was frozen.

She wasn't here. He knew that. This was not becoming of him, as a Jedi; he should not be seeing things that weren't there.

"It's not much, is it?" he said, musingly, although he didn't entirely mean to.

"No. But I rather think it suits you." She smiled, brushed some sand off his shoulder, and stepped back just as he thought of reaching for her hand.

Of course. She was only in his head.

"I have things to plan," he said, as if that could make her go away. If he wanted to protect the supply caravan, he'd have to work out the best way to do so along its route so that he didn't find himself out of his depth – fighting without his saber was still not as familiar to him.

"You're always rushing off into a fight," Satine said, reproachful, raising an eyebrow at him. "You should let yourself rest, my dear."

"I can't," he said, tiredly. He didn't really _want_ to. "I'm needed, Satine. This will help people here."

"That's what you always say." She wasn't wrong about that; Obi smiled wryly and looked down. "You're here to protect your friend's child, aren't you?" He nodded. "Well," she said, "you can do that without all this needless crusading."

"You know I couldn't just sit idly by and let things get worse," Obi said, gesturing loosely in front of him.

"No," she agreed, archly, eyebrows going up. "You would rather wear yourself out fighting than live in peace now that you have a chance."

He shook his head, frustrated despite himself. She always did this, she always acted as if he was nothing but a fighter, now. (That was not true. And she was not here.) "It isn't about wanting to fight. I want to make things _better."_

"But you do miss it, Obi. You know that." Satine spoke with a certain heaviness that he could not argue with, but her voice was sharp. It was true, though – of course he could not deny it entirely, and it would be foolish to lie to her. She always knew when he was lying.

"Yes, Satine, but that's not _why_ I'm doing this."

"Isn't it?" She frowned at him, and Obi knew it was a real question, she really wondered. She was appraising him, and he wondered what he looked like in his newly-bought coat, barefoot on the hard-packed floor.

Had Satine really been there, she would have seen a certain desperate resolve in his eyes and been worried for him, would have asked him what was wrong.

But she was not, and Obi didn't know that he looked lost.

Ghosts could not see so much.

"Obi-Wan," she said, gentle. "You've changed."

He found himself almost laughing, at that. "I know," he said. "That does tend to happen."

Satine stepped closer to him again and cupped her hand over his jaw, the scraggly mess of his beard. "I don't think you've ever liked change much, my dear."

"No, but when has that ever come into it?" he asked. He pretended not to hear the bitter note in his own voice. "I do what I must do, Satine, whether it's what I want or not."

"Believe me, I know," Satine said, wearily, and he winced. She was smiling, still, but crooked and lonely. "That has always been the way with you."

"I am aware." Obi didn't often think about it, but it was true that there were always needs greater than his own wants, and he always put those needs first. He did not consider that a particularly virtuous quality. It was only his duty and had always been, and here that was, of course, no different. But at least right now, he thought he could reconcile both need and want. Protect Luke, bring down Jabba's empire.

There was something to be said for atonement, too.

Satine slid her hand from his jaw to his shoulder and shook her head, regretfully. "You are not careful enough, my dearest Obi-Wan."

"I know," he said, tiredly, "I shouldn't risk the fight with Luke-"

"No," she interrupted. "You are not careful enough with _yourself._ That hasn't changed." She was so gentle.

Obi smiled. "Well, perhaps it would be too much to expect otherwise," he teased.

Satine looked down with a light laugh and smoothed the lapels of his coat again. Everything felt, quite suddenly, as if it was ending, and Obi reached for her, found nothing but air (because of course she wasn't real). "Satine," he said, and there was a painful lump in his throat.

"Remember, my dear Obi-Wan. I've loved you always. I always will," she said, almost as if she were teasing, her eyes sparkling, and then she was gone, of course.

He was standing alone, as he had always been.

He was a fool. An unbalanced, delusional fool.

This was why he had to do this work, too. Being alone and only venturing out occasionally was still driving him mad, that much was clear.

He had two days to plan, and then he _would_ keep the supply caravan from getting to Jabba, and that would help. He knew it would.

* * *

 **A/N: Hello I'm back! I still don't Totally know where this fic is going but I am Excited because I have some plans that are super cool so hang on for it. ;)**

 **Leave a comment?**


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